Driving With The Brakes On
by theywillneverknow
Summary: L/J One-shot - Based on the song 'Driving With The Brakes On' by Del Amitri. A short one-shot looking at the realities of war. Strong language. What marks the difference between an evil act and an evil person? And are the lines blurred beyond recognition?


Driving through the long night

Driving With The Brakes On

_Driving through the long night  
Trying to figure who's right and who's wrong  
Now the kid has gone._

She forced the car into fourth gear and accelerated into the darkness.

And he thought it was ironic.

Here they were, two adults, barely done being kids, and they were accelerating into the darkness. Both literally and metaphorically speaking.

He watched in silence as she ran a hand through her copper, red, auburn, fantastic hair, her mouth set in a grim line of determination as she continued focusing on the road ahead.

And he couldn't help but feel his heart break when he noticed her eyes.

They were dead.

The evening played again in his head like some sick nightmare that enjoyed tormenting him.

**There they were, the five of them, surrounded by nine Deatheaters with wands drawn. He looked at the man stood next to him and had never before seen so much fear in his eyes. It terrified him. **

"**Padfoot…"**

**Sirius turned to look at him and his jaw set in determination as he gave a short nod. Before anyone had a chance to blink, Sirius and James had raised their wands and began shouting spells in random directions. The other three were not far behind. Lily and Emily managed to roll over to a fallen log and ducked behind it just before a red jet of light hit the spot they had been standing. Remus was flung backwards towards a tree as a yellow blast of light hit him square in the chest but he recovered fast enough to roll and avoid the next curse that was thrown his way and rejoin the fray. **

**James and Sirius were busy battling three of the Deatheaters between them, having already scared two others into apparating away. James could feel his heart beating erratically in his chest and recognised the sickeningly familiar rush of adrenaline that he was all too used to. Behind him he could hear Sirius' frantic shouts and he wondered, somewhere deep in the vaults of his mind, how the others were doing and he hoped to God that the body he heard hit the ground was not Lily.**

**As the two young men continued firing any and every spell they could think of (including the bat bogey hex) Emily was kicking an unconscious, masked figure whilst Lily scrambled to her feet from the floor where she had been hurled by a particularly nasty spell. Her eyes took in the scene before her and she felt her stomach roll unpleasantly. There were James and Sirius sweating, bleeding and swearing as they attempted to keep the Deatheaters at bay. She watched, transfixed, as Sirius' wand was knocked from his hand and with an animalistic roar he charged at a Deatheater. Emily received a curse to the back as a robed figure turned it's attention to her and Lily heard a sickening crunch from the mess of robes that was rolling around in the dirt. Remus fell to his knees to check for Emily's pulse as Lily snapped out of her stunned daze. Her wand seemed to have a life of it's own and she was hardly aware of speaking until she knocked one, two, three Deatheaters flying with an angry purple curse. It was when she turned around, fire still blazing in her emerald eyes, rage still boiling in her stomach and the taste of metallic blood filling her mouth that saw a fallen Deatheater raising his wand to point at her and time seemed to stop.**

**She watched, helpless, frozen, accepting as he began uttering those fatal words 'Avada Ke…' but he never finished his curse because at that point he was struck by a beam of light of the most terrifying colour yet.**

**It was green.**

_I sit belted up tight,  
She sucks on a match light, glowing bronze, steering on._

She had started smoking recently. She said it calmed her nerves and that she was stressed.

He held firmly onto his seatbelt and stared as she took another drag.

_  
And I might be more of a man if I stopped this in its tracks  
And said, come on, let's go home. _

He wanted to stop the car, honest, he did. He had thought about asking her to turn around and go home where they could have a cup of tea and just curl up in bed but his voice seemed to have stopped working.

_She's got the wheel,  
And I've got nothing except what I have on._

He sighed heavily and glanced down at his lap. He was still covered in blood, mostly his own, and his clothes were beginning to stick to his skin. He felt clammy and slightly sick at the smell of blood and sweat. He chanced another glance at her and noticed, for the first time, her pale complexion and the fact that her left arm was shaking uncontrollably.

"Lil?"__

Trying to keep the mood right, trying to steer the conversation from  
The thing we've done.

"Lily where are you go…"

"Just shut up."

He blinked.

_  
She shuts up the ashtray, and I say it's a long way back now  
She just yawns._

The ashtray snapping shut startled him and he stared at her in confusion as her left leg began shaking to match the erratic movements of her arm.

"It's a long way back now. Maybe we should go home."

She yawned.

And said nothing.

Had she even heard him?

He gritted his teeth and forced down the bubble of anger that was threatening to explode.

_And we might get lost someplace  
So desolate that no one where we're from would ever come  
But she's got the wheel and I've got to deal from now on._

"Lily," He ground out, his gaze warming her face as he stared unashamedly at her unmoving features, "we should go back. What if we get lost?"

"We'll deal with it."

_  
When you're driving with the brakes on  
When you're swimming with your boots on._

Her monotonous replies were getting old, fast.

He almost preferred the silence to this aggravating, frustrating, stunted conversation.

His fists clenched and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment whilst he tried to rein in his temper.

"What the hell is going on? Lily this isn't funny."

Her hysterical laughter forced him to open his eyes in both shock and worry.

"Funny? Are you even aware of what happened tonight?" Her eyes were still trained to the road but he could tell that they were wild and he watched her carefully, slightly unnerved by the look in her eyes.

"Yes, I am aware. We were surround…"

"You fucking killed someone!"

She was screaming at him now. A panicked, shrill yell that hurt his ears and made him feel slightly sick. What was she accusing him of? He did not like her tone, had not heard that tone for nearly 3 years and yet here it was unannounced and unwanted. His eyes narrowed as the unfamiliar feeling of hate churned in his stomach.

"For you."

He was thrown forward in the car as she slammed the brakes on suddenly. He went to rub the back of his neck and turned to look at her.

"Don't you dare….for fucks sake." She thumped the steering wheel as hard as she could and her red hair shielded her face from him as she breathed raggedly and heavily.

Her leg was still shaking.

There was a moment of silence where he just stared, transfixed, at the bouncing monotony of her leg and suddenly she was fumbling with the belt strapped around her waist and was scrambling from the car, hasty to get away from him, from the smell of blood, from the memory.

_  
But unless the moon falls tonight, unless continents collide,  
Nothing's gonna make me, break from her side  
_

"Bloody….mother….fuck…." He wrenched his seat belt from around him and opened the car door to swing his legs out into the cool night air. As soon as his feet hit the road he began running. Around the front of the car, skimming the bonnet, and following the path she had just taken. His legs pumped harder as his pulse pounded in his ears and he followed the sound of her dry sobs. She had stopped just off the road, a few paces back into the trees and she was shaking uncontrollably now. Reaching her he stopped and she whipped around to face him. Panic flitted across her face briefly and she held out her hands to push him away as he attempted to embrace her.

"No!" Her hoarse cry was a horrifying mixture of pain and pleading and his heart fell to the bottom of his stomach as he reached once again to her only to be pushed away. "No…don't touch….you…you." She was struggling to breathe and she looked completely and utterly mad.

His heart strings tugged painfully. He said the only thing he could think of that would make anything better.

"I love you."

She looked at him, terrified.

"No. No you don't."

"Yes, I do." He looked at her, pity and worry and love pouring from his very soul. "And you love me."

She stared at him for a full minute and panic gripped his heart and began to squeeze. He reached for her and she remained still. He wrapped her in his embrace, trying to get her to feel again. She remained motionless in his arms as he rocked her back and forth pressing his lips to her hairline.

_Its hard to say you love someone  
And it's hard to say you don't._

"You do, Lily. You do!" He squeezed her tightly to his chest and felt the stirrings of panic when her arms remained by her sides, limp and useless. Why was she doing this? Couldn't she see that he would do anything for her? Die for her? Kill for her?

Would she not?

Cold clutched at his heart and he struggled to breathe.

She did love him. He knew it. He _did._

So why was he still trying to convince himself of that fact?

"I'd die for you Lily! I love you so much. I just…I can't…" He squeezed her once more and struggled to hear as she sobbed into his shirt.

"You…killed…yo-you…"

He resisted the urge to smack her and settled for shaking her rather roughly instead.

"Don't you think I know that?" He asked her sharply and she gasped in fright at the look on his face. He looked away, ashamed that he had made her fear him even for just a second. "Lily," He struggled to rein in his temper and spoke patiently, "This is war. People die and people kill. You remember that time we talked about the difference between an evil person and an evil thing? This is it. Now. It's kill or be killed. I'm not proud of it but I'm definitely not afraid or ashamed of it." He tilted her head up to look her in the eyes and gently, softly asked her to save him from this swirling abyss. Because he sure as hell didn't believe anything he just said and hoped to all the Gods above that she would. That she would tell him it was alright and that she didn't think that he was a monster, that she didn't see what he saw when he caught his reflection in the car window; a murderer. "You can't tell me you would be any different."

"James, I'd die for you too..."

Hope reared its ugly head deep in his heart and he searched her face, hungrily, eagerly but his stomach dropped when she turned her eyes from his and said, unwaveringly:

"But I couldn't kill for you."

He stared at her blankly for a minute and she fidgeted as she attempted to elaborate.

"I couldn't kill someone for you knowing-deciding someone's fate. And not because I'm a coward or because I don't have the will power but I couldn't bear the thought of being sent a black envelope by Dumbledore. Or the thought of you dying alone, cold and face down in the mud. I just…I can't be that person. I can't. It's…too monstrous."

She knew she had said the wrong thing the moment the word left her lips.

"Liar." He hissed at her, eyes narrowed and anger swallowing his entire being. He pulled back from her as she looked startled. He licked his dry lips as he gazed at her with an emotion bordering on hatred, love, passion, frustration and all the other crazy things she made him feel.

Now he was the mad one.

She reached out to touch a hand to his arm and he withdrew completely from her, shying away from her branding touch, the sympathetic, pitying eyes.

"James let me explain…" She didn't get a chance to finish.

"Explain what?!" He roared at her. "Explain how you think I'm disgusting? Think I'm no better than those fucking masked twats? Huh? Is that what you think? Then join the fucking club. I feel sick! I can still remember the look in his eyes you know, I can remember the smell of his skin as the curse hit him and you know what?" He paused, feeling physically ill with what he was about to admit and at the same time a crazy urge to continue. "I was powerful. For one single moment in time I was so powerful that nothing could stop me. Not even time or life itself. And I was scared. Shit scared that I was going to lose you to that son of a bitch and I won't let them take you from me Lil. I just won't." He took a harsh breath in and all but whispered. "And I'd do it again to save you." She grabbed his arms in a vice like grip and he turned to her terrified, instantly, at his sudden admission.

"Just stop it! Stop it, alright?" Her wild eyes roamed his face and he felt like they were lost school kids struggling to hold on to that last bit of sanity. They were on a precipice and soon they would fall off and he knew, instinctively, unreasonably, that no one would be there to catch them when they did. They were thrust into this war without a safety net and he couldn't help but feel that every step they took towards the finishing line was more and more unsteady then the last and that eventually they would all go clattering to the floor like pencils.

"I don't think that. I don't know what to think." She pulled away completely from him and sat on the grass, her knees pulled up to her chin as she rocked herself back and forth slowly, gratingly. He joined her after a few moments of contemplative silence.

"This is fucking messed up."

He felt her nod from beside him. The silence fell thick and heavy like a veil shrouding them from the world. The only intrusion was the occasional grasshopper or bird in the distance but the silence reigned on. Eventually, she broke it which surprised them both.

But he froze when he heard her.

"I don't love you."

And every piece inside of him that was holding on to that last pretense of hope broke.

"Or at least, I didn't think I loved you to that extent. Certainly didn't believe…didn't want to believe that you did." He found himself turning to look at her and appreciate her in the darkness. She turned to look at him and their gazes locked across the hazy gloom. And suddenly she saw him for what he was; a scared teenager who thought he had lost everything tonight in just a few seconds.

Of course he would kill for her. And although she might not want to admit it out loud there was a nasty voice, that sounded oddly like Sirius Black, that told her that she would have done the exact same thing if the roles had been reversed. Her view on the war had been naïve. She had thought that with head ducked down and moving along swiftly when told she could escape the inevitable, but death had been brought to her door regardless. James' actions were instinctive, natural and were not actions she could punish him for. He was clearly doing a good enough job of that himself. A sudden wave of guilt and nausea struck her and she felt like she was seeing clearly for the first time that night. If James had not killed that masked man then she would have been sprawled in the dirt for him to cry over. Ungrateful and selfish and more than a little immature were not good enough words to describe her reaction.

"I never said thank you." She said quietly, turning once more to admire the roadside scenery.

"You know you don't need to do that." He admonished her with a slight frown.

"Yeah, I know." She admitted with a casual shrug that managed to ease the tension in his shoulders with wonderful abandon. She plucked at the grass beside her left thigh and peered through the darkness once more. "But..I just wanted you to know. If you hadn't of done that then…" She didn't finish her sentence. He had enveloped her once more making 'shushing' sounds into her glorious hair and felt elation rise in him like a bubble as she returned his embrace; her slim limbs sliding around his torso and clinging tight.

Her eyes were screwed shut and she felt the overwhelming need to cry again but could not for the life of her figure out why. As he released her he gave her a short, weary smile.

"C'mon Lils. I'll drive us home."

And as her lips turned up slowly, tiredly, he knew it would be fine in the end.

As long as they had each other.

_ End _

_A/N : Okay, I know it was a bit cheesy and I know it went on a bit but I would really like some con-crit here. I had some ideas after listening to the song 'Driving with the brakes on' – Del Amitri but they didn't seem to mesh together very well. If anyone has any advice I'd be happy to listen because I would really like to re-write this story so that it makes perhaps a bit more sense. _


End file.
